We must reassess these constructs, deconstruct the various legacies we have inherited from our colonial past and arrive at an objective understanding of our history and key figures who people it. It is therefore essential that we are able to go beyond infantilizing binaries that present Akbar as the ‘good’ Muslim ruler to oppose Aurangzeb’s ‘bad’ ruler image, and past the even more lamentable excoriating of all Muslim rulers. Perhaps as a nation, as we attempt to come to terms with our complex heritage, we are taking a close look at the past, to understand it as well as our present. She is unabashed in her use of “we” when she writes about the purpose of the book: Moreover, she does it with a sense of ownership and involvement that do not always shine in scholarly works. Mukhoty records all of it without losing him to the events. He became emperor when he was a teen as he grew, he consolidated his kingdom, eliminating the relatives claiming the throne after his father Humanyun’s death and suppressing the rebellions erupting from the territories like Gujarat and Bengal. He was an unruly child refusing to learn to read and write or pursue education in the conventional sense of the term, interested, instead, in playing with wild animals. His story is complicated: it involves many wives, alliances, conquests, and “milk brothers”, encounters with the Portuguese and the Jesuits, and quite a few biographers. Mukhoty unpacks it all in her biography: his attempts to reform both Hindu and Muslim customs and practices by (unsuccessfully) banning the practice of sati, revoking the jiziya tax that Hindus were forced to pay while going on pilgrimage, objecting to child marriage and circumcision. He was an exact contemporary of Queen Elizabeth I, albeit far richer and more powerful with a reign far more vibrant in terms of intercultural dialogue, innovation in technology, and patronage of art, literature, and translation. Ira Mukhoty’s biography of the latter, Akbar: The Great Mughal, is a comprehensive yet simple account of the emperor’s life, one that will be of great help to readers wanting to understand more about the king while also familiarizing themselves with the how he has been represented in books, biographies, and popular culture since his time.Īkbar ruled a kingdom that stretched from modern-day Afghanistan in the west to Bangladesh in the east in the second half of the 16th century. Indian history has two “great” emperors: Ashoka of the ancient Mauryan dynasty and Akbar, one of the Mughals.